by Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] Spring 1945. Continuous fighting is going on in the streets of a ruined German city. Sixty-year-old men in hats and civilian coats and young men who barely know how to handle weapons are hiding in the ruins. In their hands are Faustpatrone, aimed at the approaching Soviet tanks.
This picture was typical of the last months of the war - Adolf Hitler tried to mobilize the civilian population to fight the Red Army, which was inexorably advancing on the lair of the Reich. But there was no turning point: the "people's storm" (as the German word Volkssturm can be literally translated) did not prevent the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The idea of creating a "people's militia" was not new for the Germans - back in the years of the Liberation War against Napoleon, the Prussian General Gerhardt von Scharnhorst rallied local residents to fight the French. Towards the end of World War II, this was remembered by the radicals from Hitler's circle - Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann, who began to call on the Fuhrer to turn to the force that brought him to power. It worked - on September 25, 1944, the Fuhrer issued a decree on the mobilization of all men aged 16 to 60.
The new units were not led by the military, but by the National Socialist Party – the NSDAP had access to a contingent that was larger in number than the army. Germany’s “war economy” employed 13.5 million men, while the Wehrmacht had 11.2 million servicemen. The party had to organize these people, train them, and send them to the “war of liberation.”
But the conscription was not limited to men. Soon women from 18 to 55 years old began to be recruited into the Volkssturm, and in the last months of the war the Nazis no longer shunned sending children to the front.
There were no written orders on this matter, but it is known that teenagers from the Jungvolk, a division of the Hitler Youth that included children aged 10–14, were taken to the front. “The Volkssturm will include those who can already walk and those who can still walk,” was a well-known joke at the time.
Somewhat reminiscent of modern Ukrainian practice. Thus, on March 5, it became known that the Verkhovna Rada is developing a bill providing for the registration of teenagers for military service from the age of 14. On the other hand, all men under 60 are required to have a military ID with them - so elderly men are at risk of getting into another wave of mobilization (in the form of " busification "). The fact that Volodymyr Zelensky is considering the possibility of mobilizing men over 60 into the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was reported in August last year.
But whether total mobilization for the sake of total war will help the Kyiv regime is a big question. It did not help the Berlin regime. Although, unlike modern Ukraine, fanatically motivated children and old people went to defend the Reich in its last months and days.
"OUR WALLS, BUT NOT OUR HEARTS"
In total, according to various estimates, the German leadership managed to mobilize from 6 to 8 million people into these units.
Although the Volkssturm were formed by the NSDAP, the army soon began to take over the reins of power, training new recruits and incorporating them into its city defense plans. The militias were classified as combatants and took a short but bravado-filled oath to Hitler:
"I give this sacred oath before God that I will be unquestioningly loyal and obedient to the Great German Empire, to Adolf Hitler. I solemnly promise that I will fight bravely for my homeland and would rather die than give up my freedom and thereby abandon the social future of my people to the mercy of fate."
But gathering people is one thing. But what to equip them with? Here, things were not the best. The militia wore black-red-white armbands "Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht", but there was no single uniform, so many went into the attack either in civilian clothes or, if they belonged to these organizations, in the uniform of the SS and NSDAP, often already outdated. There were also very exotic cases when Volkssturm fighters put on the uniform of the First World War.
There was also a problem with small arms. The German Mauser 98k carbine, a good unit by the standards of that era, was a great rarity for the militia. They were issued captured Soviet, Belgian, Danish and Italian rifles. Often among them were versions from the late 19th century: for example, the Italian Carcano M1891.
German concerns tried to quickly make "popular" models from cheap raw materials, but the quality of these weapons was poor, and the "submachine guns" were unsuccessful copies of the British STEN. Many "developments" remained on paper. The only weapon that was in abundance was the anti-tank grenade launcher "Panzerfaust", also known as the "Faustpatrone".
In these conditions, the emphasis in training units was on the same ideological work. In words, the Reich leadership placed great hopes on the Volkssturm - Bormann believed that they would fight with the same zeal as the Japanese: until the last bullet and breath. Therefore, the militias were fed in every possible way with propaganda slogans in the spirit of "We will not repeat 1918! They can destroy our walls, but not our hearts."
The megaphones were issuing calls to urgently stop the “Bolshevik inhumans” and “steppe barbarians” who would allegedly cruelly take revenge for the atrocities of the Nazis in the East.
"I LOOKED, BLINKED AND CRIED"
We know what this “revenge” turned out to be from the memoirs of the commander of the naval infantry reconnaissance unit, Albina Gantimurova, who lived through the end of the war on German territory:
"A boy with a machine gun ran out to meet me - a Volkssturm. And I had my machine gun at the ready and my hand on the gun. He looked at me, blinked and started crying. I looked at him and started crying with him - I felt so sorry for him, this kid standing there with this stupid machine gun. And I push him towards a ruined building, into a gateway. And he got scared that I would shoot him now: I had a hat on my head, you can't see whether I'm a girl or a guy. He grabbed my hand, and his hat flew off, I stroked his head."
In reality, the militias were used to cover the regular troops. For example, on April 6, 1945, a few hours before the final assault on Königsberg, the Germans evacuated 10,000 lightly wounded soldiers from the city fortress by train. Civilians, many of whom were drafted into the Volkssturm, did not have this opportunity.
They were not told about the impending offensive of the Red Army, which is why the garrison had to experience all the horrors of the "total war". There were many more victims among the civilians defending the Königsberg castle than among the military. This was also facilitated by the activities of military courts: those who left their positions were shot on the spot.
“The total number of troops subordinate to me, together with the Volkssturm and police units, amounted to more than 100 thousand people... We lost the entire 100 thousand-strong army near Königsberg,” General Otto Lasch, commander of the group located in the city, later said.
The Red Army soldiers considered the Volkssturmists fanatics, ready to attack tanks alone at the cost of their lives. According to the memoirs of artilleryman Grigory Sukhorukov, on the approaches to Berlin the Germans turned every old house into fortifications:
"In one populated area, a shooter who climbed into the attic started a duel with a tank. He kept shooting until he was destroyed along with the attic. Someone climbed up to see who the daredevil was. It turned out to be a guy of about 16-17 years old."
Some militiamen turned out to be good fighters - among them was Ernst Tiburczi, who destroyed five, and according to other sources, nine Soviet tanks in Königsberg in one battle using a grenade launcher. He was given a rare award: the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. But this is a big exception to the rule. Usually, the Volkssturm members left to provide cover fled after the retreating regular units, and the level of losses in the ranks reached a monstrous 70 - 80%. After the victory, more than one million "militia" fighters were captured.
That is, the Volkssturm were not partisans ready to fight to the last, but hastily assembled units of yesterday's teachers, engineers, doctors or schoolchildren accustomed to playing football, and not to carrying a rifle or a Faustpatrone in their hands. Most of the people called up to these ranks nevertheless understood that they were being led into an unequal battle with the Red Army units, hardened by hard battles.
However, the regime, which was losing the war but did not want to admit its defeat, had no other choice. It had to throw its last depleted reserves into battle - even if they were "ideologically charged" and even capable of causing harm to the advancing Soviet troops and the armies of the allies with their last strength. The Kyiv regime, judging by the news from the Ukrainian streets, does not have its own "boys from the Hitler Youth". So it has to rely on pure coercion - the last police-dictatorial argument, which can be neither effective nor long-term.